Yeah the sky is bright, but the landscape is lovely. I like the way the creek is meandering towards the woods. We haven't got many creeks like this anymore in Germany, they make everything straight and square to fit better with the fences.

I've just stumbled onto this thread.... this is what scenery photos are all about.

On #3 the trees make a good framing for the creek to meander through, which is nice. I think #1 is still my fave for just the simplicity and colour of it

However, on that last one.. someone seems to have a big pollution problem in their country.. the skies are the weirdest shade of blue I've seen
what were the steps you used to bring it into the orange world?

I've been working on a consistent method to create nice sepia-tone images... since I don't have a 'channel-mixer', I use the gamma levels 'un-linked' to vary the colour until it's resembles a sepia tone. In the process, I've gotten some interesting tinted images that are decidedly not sepia but still nice. This one for example, is a little on the orange side, as you said.

My basic procedure for orange/brown is to first convert the image to greyscale, then adjust the blue gamma to slightly below 1 (.80-ish). The other two colour go up, the red more than the green.

Once I decide on a tone that I like, I will use that gamma combo consistently so that my images are the same tone so I can frame them together, etc.

I think #3 is my definite favourite. I love how you've framed it using the tree on the left. It's flawless composition. The thing about the third one is that it doesn't have the white-sky problem like the others. It looks bright and natural.

smelly Wrote:I think #3 is my definite favourite. I love how you've framed it using the tree on the left. It's flawless composition. The thing about the third one is that it doesn't have the white-sky problem like the others. It looks bright and natural.

Thanks for the compliment... I'm a touch confused, though because it sounds like you're describing #1. Anyway, for that one (#1), to get the composition right I had to stand on the trunk of my car to move the horizon down out of the tree... the few dents and scratches were well worth it!

and here's another one from that afternoon that I just came across...
#4

Hmmm, perhaps I should drop a new sky into #4 as well. The new sky in #3 is interesting from a technique point of view because it's not just some random sky... it's the same sky but at a different exposure... In the shot that the blue sky is taken from I had the metering set to normal (matrix?) but the foreground and such was much too dark because I was shooting almost into the sun... So I took a second shot (#3) with the spot metering on and measured off the trees on the horizon. In theory, I could have taken a third shot shot spot metered on the stream and then included that in the composite... I will have to try this out properly.